Software Posts - Page 5

Furthering their anti-spam legislation, Canada have made a move today to ensure that users must give their direct consent when installing any software on their devices. Effective immediately, any business operating in Canada that wishes to bypass these laws will see their software installation being classed as illegal and have a C$10 million fine on their hands.

This change to the law is apparently focused toward fighting malware, helping protect consumers and create a greater awareness around problems involving malicious software installations. However legal experts have expressed concern, stating that this amendment to the legislation isn't specific enough and may target legitimate businesses trying to conduct their work.

A further addition includes that businesses wanting to install software on a users device must also make them aware if any personal information is collected by the program, or if the coding will interfere with any standard computer operations.

The Red Star operating system made in North Korea, a sloppy clone of Apple Mac OS X, was leaked online - and it didn't take long before vulnerabilities were discovered in the modified Linux operating system. The North Korean-made OS allows backdoors for remote command injection into both the PC and server OS editions, along with weak file permissions.

It's possible the North Korean government aimed towards spying on its users - or the OS coders are just inexperienced - but western security experts are analyzing methods to compromise Red Star-based PCs.

"The security of the Red Star OS inherits advantages from using peer-reviewed Linux platforms as a base but everything added or extended by North Korea that I looked at shows a low security proficiency and a lack of good programming practices," said Matthew Hickey, a cybersecurity researcher in the UK, in an interview with Forbes. "They use insecure functions as opposed to secure ones and often make mistakes that could result in security vulnerabilities."

Microsoft Windows 10 is scheduled for release before the end of 2015, and it has made OEMs hopeful that consumers will show support for the operating system. Lenovo, the No. 1 PC manufacturer in the world, has seen increased consumer interest in Windows 10 - a trend that other hardware manufacturers and analysts have seen.

"I think customers are anxious to breathe some life into that product," said Peter Hortensius, chief technology officer of Lenovo, in an interview with PC World at CES. "We're obviously very bullish and hopeful on Windows 10."

Windows 8.1 was a good OS, Hortensius noted, but Windows 10 will resolve the problems that consumers saw with the operating system. Furthermore, Windows 10 will be integrated across a number of different platforms, instead of the chaotic mess Microsoft left users and developers with during its Windows 8/Windows Phone effort.

The Daily Deal on Steam is Futuremark's 3DMark Advanced Edition, helping users test Microsoft Windows PC-based machines. The deal is live for the next 48 hours, and started at 10:00AM PST on Thursday, January 8 - with an 80 percent savings, so it only costs $4.99.

The Advanced Edition allows users to run Fire Strike Ultra, which is the only 4K Ultra HD benchmark currently available. In addition, the software enables CrossFire/SLI testing for multi-GPU machines, use benchmark looping, and see in-depth performance graphs of all benchmark runs.

It almost seems like vulnerabilities in hardware and software is all that's hitting the news in the past few days. We've reported on multiple issues ranging from the "Grinch" Linux flaw to the vulnerability in SS7's mobile network towers rendering our text messages and phone calls open for all prying eyes.

In recent news, a vulnerability in router software has opened up millions of devices to hacking. This is apparently achieved by the hacker "sending a specially crafted request to RomPager, an embedded Web server running on them" as according to PC World.

Once access has been gained, the hacker then has full control over any in-home security, systems or devices connected to the network - meaning they can steal your data, alter your information or utilize your technology to launch attacks against other systems. It gives them the ability to strip SSL from secure connections and also hijack your DNS settings, listing dodgy websites as 'safe' for your personal computers - opening you up to more malicious attacks.

Due to gaps in the deployment policies produced by engineers, Microsoft's Azure cloud service was taken offline during a period of time throughout November 2014. This information has been discovered thanks to a detailed mea culpa analysis by Microsoft themselves.

Jason Zander, Azure team member, conducted a final root cause analysis (RCA) and published it recently, claiming that the engineers intended to push software changes to improve performance and reduce processor load of the services' front-end system. However an outage was caused, meaning customers being unable to connect to Azure's storage, virtual machine, website, Active Directory or management portal functions.

The coding succeeded well in improving performance in the testing phases, however the full roll-out was discovered to encounter two main issues. Usually Microsoft deploys these updates in waves, slowly increasing the updated infrastructures bit by bit rather than a full roll-out. However an engineer saw this update as a low risk exercise after a small testing phase and pushed it to everyone in one hit. Thanks to this blunder and subsequent outage, Microsoft are heavily enforcing staged deployments from now on.

NVIDIA has released a new beta driver in the form of the GeForce 347.09, with the company releasing it as a "Game Ready" driver for two big releases this week: Elite: Dangerous and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.

The former, Elite: Dangerous, is worth noting as it's the first time the company has released a new driver the concentrates on a crowdfunded game like this. Elite: Dangerous isn't some massive AAA title like Call of Duty or Battlefield, but to the fans, it is. It's great to see NVIDIA releasing a driver ready for Elite: Dangerous. MGS V: Ground Zeroes on the other hand, we have full support for it with NVIDIA explaining "ensures you'll have the best possible gaming experience for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Elite: Dangerous."

NVIDIA has also provided an application profile for Project CARS, as well as some new 3D Vision and 3D Compatibility Modes for various games, including Alien: Isolation, Far Cry 4 and Elite: Dangerous. If you want to download the new NVIDIA GeForce 347.09 Beta drivers, grab them right here.

According to a press release issued yesterday, TomTom's navigation technology will be featured in the 'Uconnect' infotainment systems installed in new Fiat 500X cars being sold throughout Europe, starting early 2015.

These Uconnect systems will come pre-installed with TomTom software including their traffic, speed camera, weather and 'places' services. TomTom will also see their navigation systems featured in these new production models, reportedly offering highly accurate traffic services, which are said to receive over 100 million kilometers of real-time traffic measurements daily.

TomTom's Vice President of Automotive, Jan-Maarten de Vries, commented that "We [TomTom] are delighted to extend our relationship with Fiat," further stating that "by adding TomTom's LIVE services and software including accurate traffic information, the latest road closure information and better routes, Fiat empowers drivers with more advanced knowledge of the road ahead, to help make journeys faster."

AMD has just taken the wraps off of its new Catalyst Omega driver suite, which provides additional performance and a bunch of new technologies and features. The features built into the Omega drivers is extensive, but one of those stand out features is support for 5K displays.

5K you ask? What is 5K? 5K is 5120x2880, a mammoth resolution, which AMD now supports through its Omega drivers, even at 60Hz. 5K is achieved by using two DisplayPort 1.2 outputs, which some Radeon cards don't have, so you'll have to make sure you have two DP outputs before you think about buying that Dell UP2715k monitor.

5120x2880 is an incredible resolution, even overshadowing what 4K is capable of at 3840x2160 as it is an insane 14.7 million pixels, providing 218 pixels per inch, or PPI.

Windows 8 hidden features and Easter eggs are still being discovered, recent reports have claimed to find a hidden Explorer shell option in Windows 8 and 8.1 - allowing users to automatically organize and open programs alongside exiting the shell if needed.

Reports also claim that no additional programs, tweaks or registry settings are required to use these features.Interested in utilizing this for yourself? Follow these simple steps.